Boing Boing

Louis Pope Gratacap was the curator of mineralogy at the American Museum of Natural History from 1880 until his death in 1917. He usually read during his three-hour round trip to the museum from Staten Island. He also wrote novels, and one of them, The New Northland (1915), may be the earliest novel to feature a Tyrannosaurus rex. - Read the rest The post A museum curator wrote the first T. rex novel on his daily commute appeared first on Boing Boing.

What could possibly be worse than being sick with explosive diarrhea? Being sick with explosive, spicy diarrhea. Unfortunately, it sounds like the latter has been unleashed on America, as everyone's favorite source of cyclospora, Taylor Farms, has issued a recall of its products containing jalapenos. - Read the rest The post Taylor Farms recalls jalapeno products in 26 states over salmonella appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ten years after Star Wars joined Marvel at Disney, and just in time for the 50th anniversary of A New Hope, the two franchises will get their first-ever crossover, in comic form.Kevin Smith, who made us consider the fates of the independent contractors on the second Death Star, has been tasked with writing the five-issue series. - Read the rest The post Kevin Smith writes first Star Wars/Marvel comic crossover appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you've ever been wowed by a cutaway illustration of a ship from your favorite sci-fi series or movie, there's a pretty good chance Matt Cushman had something to do with it. His visualizations of the guts of ships from Star Wars and Star Trek are astounding in their detail and the thoughtfulness given to functional, interior design. - Read the rest The post Adam Savage is gobsmacked by this hand-drawn Enterprise cutaway appeared first on Boing Boing.

Everyone's been so busy worrying and squawking about Flock that we completely missed the police discovering Meta's shifty-as-hell AI Smart glasses. However, thanks to Florida's Sunshine laws-which demand that everything the cops do on the record down there is available to the public-at least two law enforcement agencies in the state have started issuing the pervy peepers to police. - Read the rest The post Florida police are using Meta's creepy smart glasses appeared first on Boing Boing.

Tom the Dancing Bug 1797 sfpc180 - mank & mook-> Please join the team that makes it possible for your friendly neighborhood comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this hostile Trumpverse! JOIN US INTHE INNERHIVE, and be the first kid on your block to get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic - before it's published anywhere, plus lots of other stuff! - Read the rest The post Tom the Dancing Bug: Super-Fun-Pak Comix, feat. Super Pals, McSmelty's World starring Mickey Mouse, and MORE! appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Internxt gives you 10TB of encrypted cloud storagefor a one-time $359.99 payment (reg. $2,900), with end-to-end encryption, zero-knowledge privacy, and no recurring storage bill.Cloud storage is useful. Paying rent on your own files forever is less charming. - Read the rest The post A giant cloud storage upgrade works out to $36 per TB appeared first on Boing Boing.

A programmer named Fogus came across a GitHub argument about chess engine development and wrote about why hobby coding communities are hostile toward large language models. Hobbyists sayis working code isn't the goal. They like to build operating systems, programming languages, and console emulators, or try to fit a working program into as few characters as possible. - Read the rest The post Why hobby coders treat AI-written code as missing the point appeared first on Boing Boing.

The TAC-2 was a famous joystick offered for Commodore's C64, the 8-bit personal computer first sold in 1982, and compatible with the Atari and other systems using the classic 9-pin plug. And now you can buy it again. There are upgrades such as a stronger steel shaft (the original was just a tire valve, according to the press release, which would be typical of the old Commodore) but its otherwise high-fidelity, including the connector (no USB!) - Read the rest The post TAC-2 is back: the new Commodore reissues an old joystick appeared first on Boing Boing.

Dima Kogan hiked in the San Gabriel Mountains, and a friend wondered which point in the range sits farthest from any road or trail. Kogan went home and computed it, and his notes on the poles of inaccessibility above Los Angeles put the answer at 4,343 meters, or about 2.7 miles, from the nearest one. - Read the rest The post The farthest you can get from a road in the San Gabriels is 2.7 miles appeared first on Boing Boing.

The US Bureau of Reclamation is resorting to moving water between reservoirs so that Glen Canyon Dam can continue to generate electricity. Darren Orf reported in Popular Mechanics on August 10, 2026, that a long drought has pulled Lake Powell and Lake Mead so low that Hoover Dam's output this year will fall by 40 percent from its full-capacity output. - Read the rest The post Hoover Dam is set to lose 40% of its maximum power this year appeared first on Boing Boing.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon's growth depends on two companies that lose tens of billions of dollars a year. In a newsletter post,"Where's Your Ed At" reported on analyst estimates from Wells Fargo, Barclays, UBS, and Deutsche Bank.Wells Fargo estimates Microsoft's AI revenue at $34.43 billion, with about 70% coming from OpenAI. - Read the rest The post Microsoft, Google and Amazon now depend on two money-losing AI firms appeared first on Boing Boing.

I Love the 90s! is a website designed to evoke the feel of channel-surfing cable TV in the 1990s. It looks like it was made before HTML was standardized (but is perfectly modern under the hood) and wraps a myriad of low-bitrate standard-def compressed-to-heck YouTubes scanned from VHS tape. - Read the rest The post I Love the 90s! curates classics of the web and cable TV appeared first on Boing Boing.

A federal rule that targets cartel money laundering has driven customers away from the money-transfer counters at small shops on the US-Mexico border. The Guardian's Lourdes Medrano reported on August 11, 2026 that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, ordered businesses in 30 border zip codes in Texas and California to file a report on every cash transaction above $200. - Read the rest The post Border corner stores have filed 700,000 reports on cash transfers appeared first on Boing Boing.

The ComicBooks.com Reading Room is a free online library of old comics that you read in your browser, one deep-zoomable page at a time. Open Culture pointed to it this week. The counter on the front page listed 20,109 books. The site promises "No login, no paywall, no catch." - Read the rest The post Read 20,000 restored golden-age comics free in your browser appeared first on Boing Boing.

Take twelve words and rearrange them to say the same thing in just five. That's the game.Sheets.works takes spreadsheets and turns them into dashboards and reports. To show off their chops in a fun way, they release a Data Drop once a week, like a collection of startup sounds or an explanation of why it takes so long to board an airplane. - Read the rest The post New daily word game challenges you to be succinct appeared first on Boing Boing.

A whole lotta Canadians love them some Wab Kinew. The current premier of Manitoba (think Minnesota but a whole lot more hockey), Kinew wore a lot of hats before wading into politics: journalist, author and musician. In every one of those roles, his skill with words, calm, friendly demeanor and intelligence made him shine. - Read the rest The post Manitoba's premier: booze returns when the Epstein files do appeared first on Boing Boing.

Reading this story made me so damn tired: as part of their effort to replace human employees with delivery robots, DoorDash has come up with a cunning plan: they're gonna use the human employees they want to replace to load delivery robots

TL;DR: Take your AI knowledge from basic understanding to exam-ready withThe Ultimate AI Learning Bundle: ChatGPT, AI Agents & Microsoft AI Certificationfor just $24.99 (reg. $145).The Ultimate AI Learning Bundle: ChatGPT, AI Agents & Microsoft AI Certification is a three-in-one beginner-friendly bundle that will not only help youbuild ChatGPT fluency but also provide you with agent-building skills and preparation for a Microsoft-backed certification, all in a single $24.99 (reg. - Read the rest The post Master ChatGPT and AI Agents with this $25 Certification Prep Bundle appeared first on Boing Boing.

Yet another untouched Roman wreck has been discovered off the coast of someplace in the Mediterranean.This time, off the coast of Sicily. Naturally, Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli declared the sunken boat "one of the most significant underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years." - Read the rest The post Man, those Romans sure lost a lot of cargo boats appeared first on Boing Boing.

I'm not fond of bricking my hardware. But I'm very fond of Valve's SteamOS. If you haven't had the opportunity to mess with a Steam Deck or Steam Machine, SteamOS is a deliciously easy-to-use, low-maintenance Linux distribution tuned to work on their hardware with next-to-no maintenance. - Read the rest The post SteamOS is coming to more computers appeared first on Boing Boing.

The upcoming hour-long film on Disney+, "Disney Worldbuilders," focuses on how the cinematic visions of seven filmmakers have been realized as physical, immersive areas of Disney theme parks.The film has more than its share of Disney and former CEO Bob Iger corporate P.R., - Read the rest The post How Disney builds immersive theme park worlds from their movies appeared first on Boing Boing.

Researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon ran a test to measure how often chatbots flatter users. In a paper on social sycophancy in AI advice, they ran OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Mistral through thousands of personal dilemmas. - Read the rest The post AI told Reddit's biggest jerks they did nothing wrong 51% of the time appeared first on Boing Boing.

Getting sick in Antarctica is no fun. Getting sick in Antarctica in the middle of winter is another problem.On July 31, an Australian crew flew a cold-weather-configured Airbus A319 Long Range from Hobart to McMurdo Station, answering an urgent call to evacuate a seriously ill American. - Read the rest The post Australian crew pulls off extraordinary Antarctic medical evacuation appeared first on Boing Boing.

Katsushi Murakami designed the Voltron robots, most of the robots in Power Rangers, and many of the Go-Bots. Matt Alt, the author of Pure Invention, reported Murakami's death in a farewell to the designer on his newsletter on August 10, 2026. - Read the rest The post The designer of Voltron and the Power Rangers robots has died appeared first on Boing Boing.

On May 14, 1945, doctors at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco injected Albert Stevens, an Ohio-born house painter, with plutonium without telling him. Stevens had checked in with what doctors diagnosed as terminal stomach cancer. Manhattan Project researchers wanted to know how plutonium moved through the bodies of the workers who handled it, and they selected him as patient CAL-1. - Read the rest The post The government secretly injected a house painter with plutonium appeared first on Boing Boing.

Kindle jailbreakers have another way into Amazon's famously locked-down e-reader. Vera, released August 10 by developers Ava and sparklerfish, uses the Kindle's own web browser and a pair of specially prepared books to get supported devices running outside code. The KindleModding project says exact model and firmware compatibility matters, and directs users through its jailbreak wizard rather than claiming every current Kindle will work. - Read the rest The post Kindle jailbreakers have a new way in with Vera appeared first on Boing Boing.

Paleontology already gives us giant carnivorous lizards, five-eyed sea creatures, and enough weird fossils to make science fiction seem boring. So, obviously, fringe paleontology has to start off the rails and then dive deep.This entertainingfirst installment of afringe paleontology icebergdescends into the theories, hoaxes, and pseudoscience that revolve around the study of prehistoric life. - Read the rest The post Fringe paleontology gets weird fast appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Learn a new language on your own terms with thislifetime subscription to the Promova Premium Planfor just $79.99 (reg. $299.99).If you're looking to learn a new language, you don't need to spend a fortune on specialist lessons or keep up with rigid schedules, thanks to Promova's Premium Plan lifetime subscription. - Read the rest The post Learn up to 12 languages without the hassle and self-doubt for just $80 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Anyone going to court in England and Wales will be obliged to turn in smart glasses and pick them up when they leave. The ban targets devices such as Meta's and clarifies that existing restrictions on recording devices apply to attire: "There are clear restrictions on taking images or videos within courts and tribunals which is why the use of Meta glasses is prohibited," a spokesperson told The Guardian. - Read the rest The post English courts ban Meta glasses and other spywear appeared first on Boing Boing.

A French manuscript from about 1485 shows a woman spinning wool in her doorway while her child plays beside her. The doorway is the mouth of a giant snail shell. She lives there.

Charles le Brun (1619-90) drew a set of human heads that match the heads of animals: an ox, a fox, an eagle, a raven, a parrot, and a pig. Louis XIV put him in charge of the decoration of Versailles in 1669, and the palace pictures needed crowds of figures a viewer could tell apart at a glance. - Read the rest The post A Versailles painter drew people with the faces of animals appeared first on Boing Boing.

F. D. C. Willard was a Siamese cat named Chester, who lived from 1968 to 1982. In 1975, his owner, the physicist Jack H. Hetherington of Michigan State University, wrote a paper on low-temperature physics and used the word "we" throughout, according to Wikipedia. - Read the rest The post A Siamese cat co-authored a physics paper in 1975 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Undertale, an indie RPG released in 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign by developer Toby Fox, has become nothing short of a pop culture icon. Since its release, critics and audiences fell in love with its memorable characters, humor, illustrator Temmie Chang's art style, bullet-hell-meets-RPG gameplay, storytelling, and of course, the soundtrack. - Read the rest The post Fans are cramming Undertale into EarthBound's Super Nintendo engine appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mario Kart 8 asks you to pick a driver, a kart body, tires, and a glider, and each category has dozens of options with their own speed, acceleration, handling, and weight. Antoine Mayerowitz's interactive guide to the Pareto frontier sorts the resulting thousands of builds with a method an economist developed over a century ago. - Read the rest The post The best Mario Kart build is an economics problem from 1900 appeared first on Boing Boing.

About 9,000 people a year search Arizona's Superstition Mountains for the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine. Some have died in the search. The mine is named for Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant ("Dutchman" was the era's term for Germans) who supposedly found a rich gold vein and kept its location secret until 1891, when he confessed on his deathbed to a woman named Julia Thomas and gave her a crude map. - Read the rest The post 9,000 people a year hunt a gold mine that geology says can't exist appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:Pok Pok gives kids ages 2-8 anad-free, low-stimulation spaceto explore, create, and learn-and lifetime family access is $59.99.Most kids' apps seem designed by someone who asked, "How many flashing buttons can we fit on one screen before a parent throws the iPad into the sea?" - Read the rest The post Trade loud, addictive screen time for Montessori-inspired Pok Pok, just $59.99 for lifetime access appeared first on Boing Boing.

Cruelty is a growth industry, and the deportation business is booming.Surprise! MAGA's favorite mass-deportation program has produced at least one conspicuous group of winners: the companies paid to lock people up.America's two largest private-prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, reported a combined $1.4 billion in revenue for the second quarter, as the number of people held in immigration detention approached 66,000. - Read the rest The post Trump's mass deportation machine is a $1.4 billion private-prison bonanza appeared first on Boing Boing.

This video is the most pleasant thing I've seen in a couple of days. Perhaps I should give up on the mainstream news.Puppies being cute is one thing, but puppies playing on ice? In little figure skater outfits? With SKATES? - Read the rest The post Dogs on Ice are beyond adorable appeared first on Boing Boing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate whose career has accumulated enough corruption allegations to require its own filing cabinet, has yet another interesting financial arrangement to explain.The New York Times reports that Paxton co-founded a cell-tower company, Premier Vertical Properties, in 2005. - Read the rest The post Texas' Ken Paxton somehow gets even sleazier appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander found strong "life affirmation" results in a Martian soil sample. Robert Jastrow, then director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Short of seeing something wiggling on the end of a pin, the case for life on Mars is now as complete as the Viking experiments could make it." - Read the rest The post Viking lander's 1976 Mars soil test may have found life after all appeared first on Boing Boing.

All the money in the world, and he still can't buy a beat. Elon Musk is dancing as if his firmware update just failed.The Six Flags old man literally hands Elon his ass. Even Diaper Donald's double-fisted dance of glory (holes) is more cohesive. - Read the rest The post Elon Musk has all the rhythm of an Austin Powers villain appeared first on Boing Boing.

Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup delivers everything I want from a fantasy detective story. Wonderful characters, fantastic world-building, and a mystery worth solving.Bennett tells the story from the point of view of Din Kol, an altered human whose misshapen talents left him useless to most regular sources of employment for altered humans in the Empire. - Read the rest The post The Tainted Cup gets the fantasy detective novel exactly right appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR:SwifDoo PDF Prolets you edit, convert, translate, sign, and run OCR on PDFs without paying a recurring subscription. A lifetime Windows license is $29.97 with code SAVE5.Adobe Acrobat isn't the only way to wrangle PDFs anymore.SwifDoo PDF Procovers editing, conversion, OCR, and document signing for a one-time fee of $29.97 (reg. - Read the rest The post SwifDoo PDF Pro handles your PDF headaches for $30 for life appeared first on Boing Boing.

Victoria Gordon, operator of a cleaning service, found a 35-year-old Mars Bar while plowing through a hoarder's house in Scunthorpe, England. Shocked by its enormity, she posed it with a contemporary bar and took a photo. The old bar, from 1991, was 62.5g, while a 2026 model is just 40g. - Read the rest The post 1991 Mars Bar highlights shrinkflation and inflation alike appeared first on Boing Boing.

Britain's Minstry of Justice has so far spent 85,300 removing a mural painted on a wall at the Royal Courts of Justice in London by Banksy, just one of several similarly costly removals.

We're big fans of the classic Blackwing pencil (here's a 24-year-old post by Mark Frauenfelder from the depths of the Blackwing Dark Age), and its makers recently posted a video showing how they are made.Now you know how Blackwing pencils are made. - Read the rest The post How Blackwing pencils (and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk) are made appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nearest Pint is an interactive map of Britain showing pub density by parliamentary constituency, with each color-coded according to the number of pubs per 10,000 drinkers, which is to say, the population. At the top of the chart is Liverpool Riverside, with 23.73 pubs for every 10,000 people, closely followed by the Cities of London and Westminster, with 21.7 pubs per 10,000 people, and Manchester (21.6), then Bristol, Edinburgh and Brighton, about 21 per 10k. - Read the rest The post UK pub density map appeared first on Boing Boing.

On February 10, 1355, two Oxford students named Walter de Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield complained about the wine at the Swindlestock Tavern. The vintner, John de Croydon, dismissed the complaint. One of the students threw his drink in de Croydon's face, and by one account beat him with the quart pot. - Read the rest The post A complaint about bad wine left 93 dead and Oxford paying for 470 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

In 1860s San Francisco, the city routinely poisoned or trapped stray dogs. The city exempted Bummer and Lazarus by name. Bummer was a black-and-white Newfoundland who lived on the sidewalk outside Frederick Martin's saloon on Montgomery Street, and he was an exceptional rat-killer. - Read the rest The post San Francisco exempted two stray dogs from its own laws appeared first on Boing Boing.